PEN Canada celebrates literature, defends freedom of expression and aids writers in peril.
On March 3, 2023, a court in Minsk sentenced writer, Nobel Peace Prize winner and PEN Belarus member Ales Bialiatski to 10 years in prison on trumped up charges of smuggling, and organizing and financing actions that grossly violate public order. Bialiatski was tried alongside two colleagues from the Viasna Human Rights Centre (Viasna)
Anneli Andre-Barrett is a senior volunteer for the PEN Canada Writers in Exile (WiE) community, a Refugee Integration Mentor, and Skills Development Team member of Ontario’s Private Refugee Sponsor Network …
Aaron Berhane was a beloved leader of our centre’s Writers in Exile community and a valued member of PEN Canada’s Board of Directors before his untimely death, due to Covid-19, in May 2021. He fled Eritrea in 2002, following a draconian crackdown on the independent press. The following extract from his posthumously published memoir The Burden of Exile: A Banned Journalist’s Flight from Dictatorship, recounts his early days hiding from government agents in Asmara.
From 2 to 7 November, to mark PEN International’s PEN Protest/Day of the Dead Campaign and the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists.
The event opens with a screening of the short film, Codename Sally, documenting the extraordinary efforts of a handful of PEN Canada members to bring Salman Rushdie in total secrecy and under heavy security, to the stage of the Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto for the PEN Benefit thirty years ago.
TORONTO, ON, October 12, 2022 – Award-winning journalist and crime analyst Luis Horacio Nájera is the recipient of the 2022 PEN Canada-Humber College Writers-in-Exile Scholarship, which provides peer mentorship to …
AVA HOMA CONTRIBUTED TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 26, 2022 Ava Homa is the Nautilus Book award-winning author of Daughters of Smoke and Fire. Among the innumerable viral …
JOHN RALSTON SAUL CONTRIBUTED TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 28, 2022 John Ralston Saul is president emeritus of PEN International. His 14 books include The Collapse of Globalism …
GRACE WESTCOTT SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 26, 2022 Thirty years ago, PEN Canada, a non-partisan organization that supports freedom of expression in Canada and writers endangered …
Fareh Malik is a spoken word poet from Hamilton, Ontario and the winner of the 2022 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award. His new book Streams that Lead Somewhere is available from Mawenzi Press. In its citation the New Voices Award jury praised Malik’s “tenderness and throat-grabbing use of imagery” and his “wide range of voices and tones to convey a nuanced spectrum of emotions and a laser sharp critique of Canada’s blatant and covert systemic racism.”